Washington condo reform gains steam with bipartisan support in Olympia

For years, lawmakers have tried to reform Washington’s unusual condo liability law that has discouraged local developers from condo construction. This year, a bill that could encourage developers to build more condos has garnered bipartisan support.

As the Puget Sound region attempts to build its way out of the housing crisis, it’s fallen woefully short on one critical aspect: affordable homeownership.

Apartments for rent are springing up all over Seattle and parts of the Eastside, and some outlying communities have added tracts of expensive new single-family homes, often far from jobs. But people who just want to be able to buy a small, reasonably priced condo are mostly out of luck — local developers all-but-abandoned condo construction in the past decade even as demand soared. That pushed prices for the typical condo in Seattle and the Eastside to nearly half a million dollars — up 117 percent in six years.